Happy New Year!
The newest issue of Arsenic Lobster Poetry Journal is up and it includes a poem by me & Robert Cole - "Swarm Two".
Plus lots of other poem creatures too, here!
http://arseniclobster.magere.com/1content.html
12/31/13
Happy Poetic New Year!
The newest issue of Arsenic Lobster Poetry Journal is up and it includes a poem by me & Robert Cole - "Swarm Two".
Plus lots of other poem creatures too, here!
http://arseniclobster.magere.com/1content.html
12/24/13
Thirteen Myna Birds is on a top ten list
Michael Dwayne Smith mentions Thirteen Myna Birds in his list of Top Ten Literary Journals.
"Poems here tend toward surrealist or Gothic or darkly darkly types–often deeply concerned with the body’s tricky, sometimes dangerous relationship to the mind, and to the surrounding physical world. Powerful feminist voices often speak through raw images here. Work can be disquieting and have sharp edges that cut quick and deep. Unique also is the “sandcastle art” approach: each issue features thirteen selections, natch, but issues are not archived. Ephemeral, sometimes disturbing … sounds like art. "
http://literaryorphans.org/ttl/2013-top-ten-literary-journals-michael-dwayne-smith-and-joe-clifford/
"Poems here tend toward surrealist or Gothic or darkly darkly types–often deeply concerned with the body’s tricky, sometimes dangerous relationship to the mind, and to the surrounding physical world. Powerful feminist voices often speak through raw images here. Work can be disquieting and have sharp edges that cut quick and deep. Unique also is the “sandcastle art” approach: each issue features thirteen selections, natch, but issues are not archived. Ephemeral, sometimes disturbing … sounds like art. "
http://literaryorphans.org/ttl/2013-top-ten-literary-journals-michael-dwayne-smith-and-joe-clifford/
12/22/13
Poetry Publishing AND Writing
For whatever reason(s), some poets and presses don’t seem to like to talk about subject matter related to poetry acceptance/rejection, how much they do or don’t submit, and how many submissions their presses receive etc… but I will. Maybe this is inappropriate or unprofessional by some people’s standards, but why? Maybe it will make me seem unpopular by some people’s standards, but oh well. I have no desire to force my way or fake my way into the popular zone.
I remember when I was younger and got more bummed out by rejections and tended to take them too personally. Once I ended up having my poetry accepted by a lot of sources, rejections didn’t bother me much – because I started to perceive it more like obviously my work wasn’t going to be everyone’s/every presses style. I mean do I like everyone else’s poetry? No way. And sometimes when I don’t like it, it’s not because it’s poorly written or clichéd or otherwise crappy. SOMETIMES it’s for reasons like that – but other times, it’s well written, but just not my style. Not that I have any ONE style. There are numerous styles I like and numerous styles I don’t like, when it comes to poetry, visual art, and lots of other things too.
Aside from my own poetry’s acceptance and rejection, what’s changed my perspective even more in recent years is running my own small poetry press, Blood Pudding Press. When I hear someone sound really bummed about having a chapbook manuscript rejected (not just some individual poems, but a whole manuscript), I can somewhat relate to that on a poet level, but I can also think about it on a press/publisher level and here’s part of how I feel about it on that publisher level.
My Blood Pudding Press is pretty itty bitty. It’s not academic (or anti-academic) or associated with any particular organization; it’s just a one woman gig of publishing unique, ribbon-bound, hand-designed poetry chapbooks – only a few a year, so that I can also focus on my own reading, writing, submitting, art stuff, other stuff. (Some poets/publishers are way better at multi-tasking than I am; not me; I’m not going to force myself to pick up my pace and then go bonkers).
The last few years, in order to choose which chapbooks I’m going to publish, I’ve run a chapbook contest. For this year’s contest, I was accepting submissions for one month and received well over 50 submissions. In the 50s is probably a very small amount of submissions compared to what college based or other more well-known, large scale presses receive – and might even be a small amount related to what some other small presses receive. But 50+ was a good number of submissions for me.
Of the more than 50 submissions I received, I only plan to choose two for publication. So far I'm not even halfway through reading them all and there's already way more than two that definitely deserve to be published, so it is going to be tough narrowing it down. I imagine it works similarly for many other small poetry presses, especially the presses that are not academically based (and I’m not talking about content there; I’m talking about being associated with a university, which has a lot of different readers and covers the publishing fees and etc…).
If you are a small press that is handled by just one individual poet (or less than one handful of individual poets), then those who handle the press can either choose to focus mostly on publishing (barely spending any time at all on their own personal writing/art/creative work – unless they have a speed racing, multi-tasking style), so that they can manage to publish more than just a few of the people who deserve to be published - OR they can choose to publish just a few of the people who deserve to be published and also have time remaining to focus on their own creative flow.
Obviously, this works somewhat differently for every individual and I’m just speaking for myself. As with many other aspects of life, I think I am pretty “in between” with this, but I choose to focus on BOTH (my own writing/submitting AND publishing others) – and for me personally, if I focused much more on publishing, then that would hugely outweigh my own creative flow and then I’d be really unhappy.
With all that said though, again, of the 50+ chapbook submissions I recently received for my Blood Pudding Press and am currently reading, I’ll bet there’s going to be more than two HANDFULS of them that deserve to be published – and it will be tough narrowing it down to only two.
I remember when I was younger and got more bummed out by rejections and tended to take them too personally. Once I ended up having my poetry accepted by a lot of sources, rejections didn’t bother me much – because I started to perceive it more like obviously my work wasn’t going to be everyone’s/every presses style. I mean do I like everyone else’s poetry? No way. And sometimes when I don’t like it, it’s not because it’s poorly written or clichéd or otherwise crappy. SOMETIMES it’s for reasons like that – but other times, it’s well written, but just not my style. Not that I have any ONE style. There are numerous styles I like and numerous styles I don’t like, when it comes to poetry, visual art, and lots of other things too.
Aside from my own poetry’s acceptance and rejection, what’s changed my perspective even more in recent years is running my own small poetry press, Blood Pudding Press. When I hear someone sound really bummed about having a chapbook manuscript rejected (not just some individual poems, but a whole manuscript), I can somewhat relate to that on a poet level, but I can also think about it on a press/publisher level and here’s part of how I feel about it on that publisher level.
My Blood Pudding Press is pretty itty bitty. It’s not academic (or anti-academic) or associated with any particular organization; it’s just a one woman gig of publishing unique, ribbon-bound, hand-designed poetry chapbooks – only a few a year, so that I can also focus on my own reading, writing, submitting, art stuff, other stuff. (Some poets/publishers are way better at multi-tasking than I am; not me; I’m not going to force myself to pick up my pace and then go bonkers).
The last few years, in order to choose which chapbooks I’m going to publish, I’ve run a chapbook contest. For this year’s contest, I was accepting submissions for one month and received well over 50 submissions. In the 50s is probably a very small amount of submissions compared to what college based or other more well-known, large scale presses receive – and might even be a small amount related to what some other small presses receive. But 50+ was a good number of submissions for me.
Of the more than 50 submissions I received, I only plan to choose two for publication. So far I'm not even halfway through reading them all and there's already way more than two that definitely deserve to be published, so it is going to be tough narrowing it down. I imagine it works similarly for many other small poetry presses, especially the presses that are not academically based (and I’m not talking about content there; I’m talking about being associated with a university, which has a lot of different readers and covers the publishing fees and etc…).
If you are a small press that is handled by just one individual poet (or less than one handful of individual poets), then those who handle the press can either choose to focus mostly on publishing (barely spending any time at all on their own personal writing/art/creative work – unless they have a speed racing, multi-tasking style), so that they can manage to publish more than just a few of the people who deserve to be published - OR they can choose to publish just a few of the people who deserve to be published and also have time remaining to focus on their own creative flow.
Obviously, this works somewhat differently for every individual and I’m just speaking for myself. As with many other aspects of life, I think I am pretty “in between” with this, but I choose to focus on BOTH (my own writing/submitting AND publishing others) – and for me personally, if I focused much more on publishing, then that would hugely outweigh my own creative flow and then I’d be really unhappy.
With all that said though, again, of the 50+ chapbook submissions I recently received for my Blood Pudding Press and am currently reading, I’ll bet there’s going to be more than two HANDFULS of them that deserve to be published – and it will be tough narrowing it down to only two.
12/10/13
Odd Holiday Myna Barbs
“hands cup beneath gauze like pools - bubbling under the chemicals and friction - not exactly decaying: more like cocooning - like a green and coppery cake”
(These five new pieces join forces with remaining poems by Bekah Steimel, Cassandra Dallett, Jay Sizemore, and Tim Kahl.)
Here - http://13myna.blogspot.com/
12/9/13
Less than Five Days left to Enter the Blood Pudding Press chapbook contest!
Less than five days remain to submit your poetry chapbook to Blood Pudding Press's latest chapbook contest!
The submission window will close at midnight, this Friday December 13.
Find out more details here - http://bloodyooze.blogspot.com/2013/11/blood-pudding-press-is-now-accepting.html
The submission window will close at midnight, this Friday December 13.
Find out more details here - http://bloodyooze.blogspot.com/2013/11/blood-pudding-press-is-now-accepting.html
12/7/13
New Poetry Chapbook Interview
A new chapbook/collaborative interview of me and Robert Cole, conducted by Laura Madeline Wiseman!
"I wanted to start a collaboration with Juliet to explore the aspects of life that I have been afraid to confront. I wanted to scare myself, really. It became apparent pretty fast that our combined style of writing was doing just that."
Robert Cole
"...since as an individual writer I seem to use similar content and even similar words a lot, I really enjoyed receiving lines that included words that don’t usually pop out of my poetry brain (like scrimshaw and sultans and puppies) and integrating that stuff into the same forum as my kind of words (like egg cups and tentacles and a blow torch) and probably creating new kinds of descriptions for both of us."
Juliet Cook
Read more here-http://www.lauramadelinewiseman.com/blog/2013/12/07/the-chapbook-interview-juliet-cook-robert-cole-on-collaborative-chapbooks/
"I wanted to start a collaboration with Juliet to explore the aspects of life that I have been afraid to confront. I wanted to scare myself, really. It became apparent pretty fast that our combined style of writing was doing just that."
Robert Cole
"...since as an individual writer I seem to use similar content and even similar words a lot, I really enjoyed receiving lines that included words that don’t usually pop out of my poetry brain (like scrimshaw and sultans and puppies) and integrating that stuff into the same forum as my kind of words (like egg cups and tentacles and a blow torch) and probably creating new kinds of descriptions for both of us."
Juliet Cook
Read more here-http://www.lauramadelinewiseman.com/blog/2013/12/07/the-chapbook-interview-juliet-cook-robert-cole-on-collaborative-chapbooks/
12/3/13
New at Tarpaulin Sky Press!
One collaborative poem by Robert Cole & Juliet Cook and two poems by Juliet Cook are now up at Tarpaulin Sky Press!
- http://www.tarpaulinsky.com/2013/12/robert-cole-juliet-cook/
***
- http://www.tarpaulinsky.com/2013/12/robert-cole-juliet-cook/
***
POEMS BY ROBERT COLE & JULIET COOK
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